Assignment on Sustainability and its importance

Sustainability can be defined as meeting the need of present without compromising on future reliability. Human civilization makes the resources to sustain in our way of living a modern life. Sustainability is how we live in balance with our environment and natural world that surround us, protecting our world from harms and destructions. We now live in a modern and consumerist urban world that is almost fully developed and on the other hand we are also using our natural resources everyday of life. Urban areas consume more power send resources than rural settings. Natural resources help us in meeting our needs of heat, light and other household uses. sustainability defines a fine line between fulfilling our needs from resources in moving forward economically and technologically and the requirements to protect the environment in which our future generations will live. But sustainability does not concern only about environment, it has its concerns with health too in a society. Sustainability is about evaluating the long-term effects of human actions and to make steps on how to improve them.

The World Summit on Social Development in 2005 came up with three pillars that take part sustainability development. These cores of the sustainability development form the backbone of many national standard and certified schemes tackling that the world is facing now a days. meeting the need of present without compromising on future reliability. While making decision about present we should must consider the future generation requirements.

1.       Economic development – this issue is proved as the most problematic while dealing with sustainability issues. It is about giving incentives for organizations and other businesses so that they can here themselves to the sustainability development. It is also about to encourage the development for an average person to do their roles play when and where they can do that; it is okay to know that one person can rarely achieve much but when counted as a group it is a lot because effect in some areas are cumulative. Economic development is about giving people what they want but not compromising on future needs and quality of life.

2.       Social development – there ae many areas and corners of this pillar. Most importantly, it is about awareness and protection of legislation of people’s health from the pollution and all other harmful deeds of the businesses and the organizations. It is about balancing the access to the available resources without damaging the quality of life. The biggest hot topic regarding that right now is sustainability houses, how to build them from material that is sustainable. It also includes inspiring people on contributing to environmental safety and suitability.

3.       Environmental protection – almost all of us are aware of what we need to do in order to maintain or environment maybe by recycling or reducing our use of power, or walking short distances instead of using vehicle. We should keep our carbon emission at low level. This is the third and the most primary concerned pillar of sustainability. it is concerned about how technology is going to give us a greener future. Development in biotechnology is the key of sustainability.

Sustainability as a Wicket problem:

The sustainability issues comprise of how humanity is going to use the resources that nature gave us and utilize its dynamics, keeping in mind the safety of other species present on earth without being a threat to them and without damaging their dynamics of nature. The foreseen dangers of modern society and the activities of modern humanity toward sustainability are very much in counting and all are interconnected, like habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, oceans degradation, ozone layer depletion, deforestation, danger of polluting fresh water, toxic chemicals that are accumulating in our environment , all the diverse climatic changes etc. There are a lot of books written on damage that humanity is causing and the unsustainability of the current activities of people. Like breaking free from the world of more [Naish 2008], Collapse [Diamond 2005]. Overshoot [Catton 1980], Now or Never [Flannery 2009], Climate Wars [Dyer 2008]. The opposite of sustainability is collapse of humanity and society. It is all human who can make future sustainable “within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards” [Simon 1995b, 642]. It is unlucky for us that the discipline of sociology is ill quipped to provide us this understanding because of its long past of suspending the dynamics of nature instead of looking toward theta strange connection between humanity and nature [Morphy 2011]. The problem here is whether the disclosing of the nature is appropriate for materialistic world of nature dynamics that make the human species and habitat appropriate for our living that in return unleash the living of other species.

Why we have been unable to solve this wicked problem?

The issue of developing sustainability is falling not because of lack of trying and putting efforts not even because of the lack of intelligence. The activities happening in the environment had attracted many sharp minds on this world who worked days and nights for decades to resolve this issue and for the betterment of the humanity. They gave the awareness to the general and specific public about the magnitude and crucial corner of the issue and what should be done in order to live more sustainably they worked organized way. And even they succeeded in finding countless ways through which degradation of the environment can be reduced.

But why none of the above worked out.

This question is not only haunting the environmentalist, it is also making footprints into the minds of common people all over the world. Everyone is thinking about how they can individually cooperate in order to resolve this issue of developing sustainability. But why we are still unable to solve this problem? Why leaders are not taking important actions before it is too late?

After many studies the answer to this question is that the process down not fit the issue. And it looks like without realizing this, environmentalist is trying to get a square peg round the empty hole and it will not work out. Peg here is used to resolve the issue and the hole is the issue. If they do not fit then no magnitude of effort and even the rightest minds in world can make it fit. In order to continue the try exercise in infinite futility.

 System thinking: After 12 months of the progress on Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) from the government, NGOs and even business they are able to look at ways of achieving the goal. But still there is something that is missing, and that is the glue that can hold everything together: system thinking.

System thinking highlight the interactions between various parts of a system – a city, a society, a sector – and the system thinking ensure that they are delivering their part. Now a days, we pretty capable of setting a goal and aiming to achieve it, but is SDG is going to shift overall system on path of developing sustainability, all that require is a sincere amount of joined up thinking that can go deeper to highlight the main problem lines. A really strong system approach is requiring in order to make SDG successful.

1.       Joined up effort on individual goals: the first thing that we need to do is, what system is actually for, who is holding on to power, resources and organization that world for change and identify where the interlinkages are present. In order to unlock the most powerful options and opportunities, understanding the system in detail is crucial step to take.

“if you want to go far, go alone; if you want to go further, go together”

The good example here to highlight is The Marine ColLABoration, it worked to bring together groups of many NGOs which work on ocean. Instead of working individually they are making efforts together ang join their force

2.       A ‘Network set’ of goals: For accelerating the process, mapping the activities around the goals of individual is important level. For example, there are many foundations who look at how the system fits all together at very micro level. National government should start looking for some joined up approach as it would be easier to look at how to develop action and policies to tackle with the problem, once they understand that how the goal links.

3.       The ‘HOW’ of sustainability development: This is the final rub. If the system globally was working in appropriate ways, we would not require to set mission in order to remove poverty and hunger. But the current system is not set up with this. It requires being inclusive in activities that we are operating and, in their governance,, naming the perceptions that we are making about what effort will work out and in what context and finally it means that being serious about this and inspiring people to take control of their own future.

References of Sustainability and its importance

Diamond, J. 2005: Collapse: How Complex Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. New York: Penguin (http://cpor.org/ce/Diamond%282005%29Collapse-HowSocietiesChooseFailureSuccess.pdf)

https://www.environmentalscience.org/sustainability

Agyeman, J., Bullard, R., and Evans, B. 2003 Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World. London: Earthscan.

Balint, P.J., Stewart, R.E., Desai, A., and Walters, L.C. 2011 Wicked Environmental Problems. Washington: Island Press.

Dyer, G. 2008 Climate Wars. Toronto: Random House.

Catton, W. 1980 Overshoot. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Flannery, T. 2009 Now or Never. Toronto: HarperCollins.

Murphy, R. 2006 “Realismo medioambiental: de la apologia a la sustancia.” Arxius de Ciències Socials, University of Valencia, Spain 12-13.

Naish, J. 2008 Enough: Breaking free from the world of more. London: Hodder & Stoughton

https://www.thwink.org/sustain/deadlock/WhyUnableToSolveProblem.htm